Weird Tales/Volume 14/Issue 5/The Nightmare Tarn

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The Nightmare Tarn
by Clark Ashton Smith
1436974The Nightmare TarnClark Ashton Smith

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) before 1964, and copyright was not renewed.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1961, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 62 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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The Nightmare Tarn by Clark Ashton Smith


I sat beside the moonless tarn alone,

In darkness where a mumbling air was blown—

A moulded air, insufferably fraught

With dust of plundered charnels: there was naught

In this my dream but darkness and the wind,

The blowing dust, the stagnant waters blind,

And sombre boughs of pine or cypress old

Wherefrom a rain of ashes dark and cold

At 'whiles fell on me, or was driven by

To feed the tongueless tarn; within the sky

The stars were like a failing phosphor wan

In gutted tombs from which the worms have gone.

But though the dust and ashes in one cloud

Blinded and stifled me as might a shroud,

And though the foul putrescent waters gave

Upon my face the fetors of the grave,

Though all was black corruption and despair,

I could not stir, like mandrake rooted there,

And with mine every breath I seemed to raise

The burden of some charnel of old days,

Where, tier on tier, the leaden coffins lie.



While sluggish black eternities went by

I waited; on the darkness of my dream

There fell nor lantern-flame nor lightning-gleam,

Nor gleam of moon or meteor; the wind

Withdrawn as in some sighing tomb, declined,

And all the dust was fallen; the waters drear

Lay still as blood of corpses. Loud and near

The cry of one who drowned in her despair

Came to me from the filthy tarn; the air

Shuddered thereat, and all my heart was grown

A place of fears the nether hell might own,

And prey to monstrous wings and beaks malign:

For, lo! the voice, O dearest love, was thine!

And I—I could not stir: the dreadful weight

Of tomb on ancient tomb accumulate

Lay on my limbs and stifled all my breath,

And when I strove to cry, the dust of death

Had filled my mouth, nor any whisper came

To answer thee, who called upon my name!